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CLAN
Care leavers of Australia Network
Clan was set up to bring all care leavers of Australia together. Some Australian children shared a similar fate to the child migrants. Clan exists to fight for rights and justice. They have a large library of books which can be borrowed, they also supply information on how to access records within Australia.
Many of the Australian children suffered abuse and until Clan was set up to fight for recognition and justice little was done for these former Ward children.
Clan publishes a regular newsletter which features both information and personal stories together with various contacts. Clan exists for all care leavers including former child migrants.
Clan does not at present have a web site but can be contacted at
Address of founder.
Leonie Sheedy
P.O Box 164
Georges Hall
New South Wales 2198
Web Site produced by ACW (Docter2k@Hotmail.com)
a brief history of child migration
British children have been removed from orphanages and institutions and transported to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Zimbabwe. In many cases this was done without the parents knowledge, with the children deceived into thinking they were orphans with no real families of their own. An estimated 130,000 children have been migrated since the scheme began in 1618, the last in 1967.
After World War Two thousands of children were transported to Australia. It was part of a plan to populate Australia with "good, white British stock". For the children it was a tragedy. Many were put to work as labourers on farms and building sites and without pay or proper supervision, many suffered appalling abuse. These men and women, now in their sixties and seventies, have discovered the truth about the terrible and cruel lies that have ruined lives. Families are being discovered back in Britain and that they never knew existed.
Approximately 40% of children sent to Australia after World War two were sent by Catholic religious orders and Catholic Child Agencies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to be cared for by religious orders who ran a variety of institutions for children. The average age of children sent to Australia by Catholics was 9.4 years old, the youngest was two years old. 65% of Catholic children sent to Australia were sent by the Poor Sisters of Nazareth. 45% went to the Christian Brothers, 19% to the Sisters of Mercy, 14% to the Nazareth Sisters and the remainder to other Catholic organisations.
Other organisations involved in the deportation of children from Britain, were the Fairbridge Society, Barnardos, the Church of England, the Methodist Church and the Salvation Army.
The fear of Japanese invasion had a dramatic effect on Australian immigration policy. As the invasion scare receded by 1943, the government began to develop it's new immigration plans. However, Labour was in power, memories of the Depression were etched in members minds and a large scheme of child migration seemed the ideal spearhead for post war mass immigration with it's slogan "Populate or Perish". A second slogan was coined, "The child the best migrant". On 19th October 1943, Dr H C Coombs, Director-General of post war reconstruction, wrote in a memo, "The Minister thinks we should plan for immigration of large numbers of children after the cessation of hostilities". This possibility was explored by a Sub-Committee on Child Migration within the Inter-Departmental Committee on Immigration Policy and out of these deliberations the plan was evolved to take 50,000 "war orphans" during the first three years after the end of the war. This became government policy.
When he made his first major statement on immigration policy in the House of Representatives on 2nd August 1945, the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell referred to the Government's plan to bring 50,000 orphans to Australia during the first three years of peace. In fact, and ironically, this program of child migration was the most specific immigration program to emerge from the war years.
It was not to be. The government, at this
stage, was out of touch with reality over the war orphan situation in
Europe. Such vast numbers were not available. Most countries
refused to consider sending war orphans to Australia. In Britain,
the Minister for Pensions forbade their emigration. In the event, in
1947, the long standing child migration agencies - Fairbridge, Barnardo's,
and various organisations with the Catholic Church among them, recommenced
sending certain apparently deprived and abandoned children to
Australia.
CHILD MIGRANTS
At the most recent census the population of Cairns and district was stated as 130,000.
Cairns was established as a Municipal Borough in 1884.
So what has this to do with Child Migrants? By coincidence the number of children, all ranging in age from 3 years to 16 years old, who were sent by the British Government to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Zimbabwe during the period from 1618 to 1967 has been reliably estimated at 130,000. In 1884 the migration of children (known as British Home Children) to Canada was in full swing. These are undisputed facts. Another way of thinking about it is to imagine filling the 'Gabba' ground with young children, making them all disappear, then going through the process several more times with further young children. Then try to explain to distraught families of these children that they will most probably never see them again. Inconceivable ? No - it really happened to thousands and thousands of families.
How did it all begin? There can be little doubt that those responsible for sending children from Britain to the 'colonies' in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the early part of the 19th century acted with the best of intentions and for the good of the children, believing they would have a better life. However those good intentions were tainted in the latter part of the 19th century by the expediency of sending young children abroad, more to get rid of them than to help them. Those familiar with the writings of Charles Dickens will appreciate that in Victorian times in Britain there existed an altogether sinister set of morals whereby young children who came from broken homes- for whatever reason- or were part of families existing at starvation level were considered to be a nuisance and potentially criminal. At the same time there was a shortage in Canada of farm workers and domestic help so the answer was obvious - send the children to Canada, and let us not be too careful about which children are sent, so don't stop short at the potentially criminal, or illegitimate, or orphaned - send any child whose parents are too poor and lacking in influence to do anything about it! This is the reason why in the years between 1870 and 1948 close to 100,000 children were transported to Canada without their parents consent, to be indentured as farm labourers or domestic servants ,more than half that number in abominable conditions, until the age of 18, when they were put out to fend for themselves with no knowledge of their parents or families, or even what their own birth names were. Neither the Canadian Government nor the Institutions in Britain which sent the children took any responsibility for their welfare from the day they first arrived in Canada. One of the worst parts of this was that the rumour was spread that these immigrant children were in some way tainted because they had been sent away from their mother country. The descendants of many thousands of these 'British Home Children' in Canada are still scouring the records in that country and in Britain to find out their parents backgrounds, much of the time with no co-operation ( and many times blatant obstruction) from the British Government and Institutions. A very fine book about this is "Neither Waif Nor Stray (The Search For A Stolen Identity)" written by Perry Snow BA(Hons)MA, a Clinical Psychologist in Canada, the subject of the book being his own father- Frederick Snow.
It is estimated that the number of descendants in Canada of 'British Home Children' is 4 million, and that their relatives in Britain could number 20 million.
So how did Australia become involved?
The forced emigration of children to Canada came to a halt in World War Two for obvious reasons. After the War very few were sent to that country. There had been a limited amount of emigration of children to Australia prior to the War. However, following WW2 the Australian Government was apparently fearful of it's neighbours to the North and declared a policy of 'populate or perish'. Approaches were made to the British Government to send over children of "good, white British stock". The British Government was advised by a number of experts of the dangers of such a policy, but ignored the advice and gave virtual licence to child care agencies in Britain to start emigrating children, mostly to Australia but also New Zealand and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The agencies involved were the Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Methodist Church, Salvation Army, Fairbridge Society and Barnardos.
In the majority of cases the children were emigrated against the wishes of their parents, were given a false impression of the life in front of them, were separated from their siblings and had their records falsified. In a very large number of cases parents were told " your child has been adopted into a caring family in Britain"- and other similar lies. No birth certificates accompanied the children and as a result even to-day former Child Migrants in their fifties and sixties have no real idea of their backgrounds or knowledge of their families. One of the worst features of the migration was that , following their arrival at the dock in Australia, children were deliberately separated from their sisters/brothers and sent off in different directions.
It would be totally wrong to say that all Child Migrants were badly treated in Australia. Many were quite happy and are now leading good, productive lives. However, the vast majority could lay no claim to happiness as a result of migration. Of the child care organisations mentioned above the worst record belongs to the Catholic Church. Children were sent from Catholic Institutions in Britain to similar institutions in Australia. Many girls were sent to "orphanages" run by the Sisters of Mercy. Their treatment is described in various publications, so suffice it to say that very few enjoyed their experiences. A large number of boys were sent to institutions run by the Christian Brothers. The institutions at Bindoon, Clontarf, Tardun and Castledare in Western Australia have become notorious in Australian modern history as places of appalling cruelty and widespread perversion, including repeated rapes of the boys by the Brothers. The main buildings at Bindoon were constructed by the boys themselves (as young as five years old) with no safety precautions, working intolerably long hours and in atrocious conditions. The buildings at Bindoon are rightly said to still contain the blood of many unfortunate boys.
The story of Child Migration remained virtually untold (in no small measure due to a campaign of secrecy by Governments and Churches) until the late 1980's. In 1997/1998 there was a British Government Select Committee hearing into the scheme, and an Australian Senate Committee is also due to issue a Report in May 2001.
I write this brief account with some experience of Child Migration as my sister and I were separated from our two brothers in 1946. Valerie was sent in 1949 as a Child Migrant to Adelaide and we never saw each other again. She died there in 1978. My two brothers and I met in April of 2000 for the first time in 54 years.
Roy J Stacey February 2001
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